Friday, 8 December 2017

Some trolls are described as having especially stone-like skin, and the crystalline troll is this to a particular extreme. Like most other trolls, they're capable of regenerating their injuries, but their crystal structure makes them immune to acid, the standard troll-hunting aid. Of course, this monster isn't without its weakness. Sonic attacks disrupt the healing ability. So if you're going up to the mountains where these guys live, pack a bard.

The description called for crystalline trolls to be more glass-like, but I took inspiration from tourmaline clusters. When I rolled this creature I was a bit disappointed that it was pretty much just a troll made of shiny-stuff. The illustration in the book isn't really that interesting. But I liked the idea of maybe making it so the crystalline troll looks kinda normal (albeit smooth) on the outside, but if you cracked it you'd get these really bright solid gemstone inside. No guts or bones, just solid stone.

Also apparently you can choose these as player characters? But with level adjustment and starting hit dice, you'd only be able to play a 1st level crystalline troll in a 15th level campaign.

Sunday, 26 November 2017

The Hecatoncheires -- the hundred-handed ones-- are one of those creatures from the dawn of the universe, when the gods were birthing freakish horrors all willy-nilly. There aren't that many of these creatures out there, which is fortunate, since the Hecatoncheires has one of the highest CRs in the game (57!) They don't have much in the way of magic, the way a lot of the creatures at that level of play tend to have.

It just has a heck of a lot of arms.

Good for you if you're a human-sized creature, because this fella'll only be able to get its arms in order to hit you twenty times in a turn (and it probably won't miss).

Okay, so I said they don't have much in the way of magic, but that doesn't mean they're completely non-magical. For one, on the very small chance that it feels it needs help, the Hecatoncheires can summon another one of its kind. So now you're dealing with 200 sword-wielding arms wanting to chop you into hamburger meat. Also, they can make themselves fly.

An average intelligence combined with the madness of 50 arguing heads means that they have little in the way of ambition outside smashing stuff. Probably the best way to get rid of a rampaging Hecatoncheires is to get yourself a really really powerful wizard to teleport it to an empty spot in the universe every couple of centuries.

In Greek mythology, the Hecatoncheires (there are three of them) weren't benevolent per se, but they were definitely less evil than the version in D&D. They got locked up in Tartarus by their father Uranus when he feared that they would usurp him. Later on, Zeus busted them out to get their help in his war against the Titans. As a reward, the Hecantoncheires now guard Tartarus, where the Titans are imprisoned. There's probably some poetic justice there.

Wednesday, 8 November 2017

The hollyphant is a celestial creature primarily associated with Chaav and Lastai, two gods of joy, acting primarily as their messengers. Most of the time a hollyphant is seen, it will appear as a petite flying elephant, about the size of a small dog. But if it needs to attack, it will shift into a giant, more threatening shape.

While small, the hollyphant is immune from all spells. It loses this protection when it shifts into its larger form, trading defense for offense. Despite the size change, it remains just as nimble both on ground and in the air. It has as many magical spells, but it's main attack is it's trunk. As well as knock enemies about in it, the hollyphant can either release a shattering bellow or spray a shower of light (deadly to evil).

Note that both forms of the hollyphant are it's true form. If viewed through a true seeing spell, both its large and smaller selves will be seen at the same time.

This is one of those creatures that I always kinda rolled my eyes at when I saw it. The illustration of the big winged elephant thing is not that good. But then I noticed there was a CUTE TINY GOLDEN FLYING ELEPHANT hiding next to it and I was like yesssssss.

I chose to do this as two illustrations instead of one because the CUTE TINY GOLDEN FLYING ELEPHANT deserved to be more noticeable than it is in the book. Some liberties were taken with the design of the big form. It's supposed to have wings, but I like to think it can still fly with its ears. Just a huge bulk kept aloft by vigorously flapping tiny ears.

Tuesday, 31 October 2017

Sometimes ghouls get lumped together with zombies. They're dead, they eat flesh, they're just a bit meaner, right? Well, zombies happen because of external circumstances (spells, curses...) and are mindless, so that's not right. They're not the same as revenants, another species of intelligent undead, since they're not motivated by revenge, anger or any sort of emotion.

The ghoul rises from the dead because it's hungry.

Those who practice cannibalism risk becoming ghouls. Now, this seems like an easier path to immortality than, say, discovering the philosopher's stone or going through all the tedious rituals to become a lich. Just eat a few orphans and homeless people and that's eternity for you, baby. An eternity of being hungry. But if you're the sort of person that would happily chow down on your fellow man, then you're probably not the type to be disappointed in the results. You don't get magical powers, but you get some poisonous claws so that's neat I guess?

Did a buncha research on ghouls, because I know they're a folkloric beast that's undergone quite a bit of transformation over time. I already knew they were an Arabic beastie (a ghûl), with them appearing in the Arabian Nights stories -- spooky monsters what hide in graveyards and eat corpses. What I didn't know is that that version of the ghouls are a mistranslation-slash-fabrication by the translators of the original texts. Early ghouls were more like demons or evil jinn that lived out in the desert and lured travelers to kill them. They were also often feminine, shapeshifters, and used as boogeymen to scare kids. Pretty much a generic monster that appears in every culture in the world.

But the Westernized version has stuck so that the ghoul as a skulking male/genderless grave-robber functions as today's definition. Lovecraft went in a bit of an interesting thing with them, making them appear less and less human the more time the ghoul has spent unalive.

Monday, 30 October 2017

Zombies are perhaps the quintessential undead. Their ubiquity is due in part to their flexibility - anything that lives, dies. Anything that dies, can be raised as a zombie. Zombie humans, zombie dogs, zombie ogres, zombie dragons; all are potential foes when facing a necromancer of sufficient power.

In terms of necromantic finesse, however, zombies are pretty near the bottom of the barrel. An extremely quick fix to a deeply profound problem (death), they are often little more than hastily-recruited servants, capable of a narrow portfolio of limited tasks (such as biting adventurers, or carrying trays) and fall apart at the slightest pressure. Outside of amateur necromancy (where zombies and zombie-like efforts are drearily commonplace), zombies are rarely used except as a "meat shield" (grisly literal in this case) to absorb an attack, or as a swarm to overwhelm a weakened foe.

First post for me since the Colossus, which was ages ago! Oy. I actually did an earlier version of this but I didn't like it so I completely did it over. Maybe I'll post the other one sometime. It wasn't very good, though. I think both Blanca & I avoided zombies as a Dungeons & Drawings subject for ages because... zombies are quite ubiquitous as a subject of illustration? I hate saying stuff like that, but... I don't know. You just see them kind of a lot, I guess. My theory is that they're fun to draw because you can make them as ugly/deformed as you like and they don't look weird (you don't have to sweat proportions too much), and they are quite well served by relentlessly adding detail (wrinkles, wounds etc) - which also serve to mask any structural inaccuracies. Case in point - I only realised at the end of drawing this picture that the zombie's right foot is backwards. In any other humanoid creature that would be grounds for another tiresome redraw, but with the zombie - you can just explain it away by saying something like "oh, this zombie was just assembled poorly". Brilliant!

Monday, 23 October 2017

Sometimes a circus appears in town. The music is joyous, there's laughter in the air, the sweet smell of butter and candied fruit. But the colour of the tents are muted, the animals in their cages are listless, and, despite the capering and smiles, there's something disingenuous about the entertainers. The ringleader, an especially tall lead clown, is the happiest of the lot, and his laughter and smiles ring true. Something doesn't feel right, but the show is good and the crowd has never found itself laughing so much. People return to their homes giggling and exhausted.

As silently as is appeared, the next day the circus is gone. People lie in bed, tired, faces aching from last night's smiles, and feeling strangely downhearted. It feels like after last night, they'll never feel that kind of happiness again, that every other joke they see will never be as funny. After some weeks, some people recover their spirits, but most don't. One night there's a laughing shadow in the streets. The next day, those listless few are gone. They're never seen again.

--

The Gray Jester is one of those fey creatures that prefers people to the forest. It's attracted to the feelings of joy humans are capable of, craving smiles and the sound of laughter, and strives to create those feelings in others. Of course, laughter is what the Jester feeds on. If it's antics don't work, it's fine. Tasha's Hideous Laughter can do the work for it. Its touch and its scepter can transfer the spell, and allow the Jester to feel on joy (leading to Charisma drain).

A spooooky creature for a spooooky month. I've always been kinda annoyed by the scary clown trope. Not the cliché-ness of it, but how some scary clowns go really over the top with the scariness with sharp teeth and tattered clothes and bloodstains and such. I don't find clowns scary, though I do admit they can be repulsive in that weird visceral way (especially Lou Jacobs; that head ain't right).

Having now attempted to draw a scary clown without trying to use those typical evil clown type markers, and I can say how difficult it is to do it. Thinking about Pennywise from the original It miniseries, part of what made him so scary was the jolly brightness of his outfit combined with Tim Curry's performance. With the new It, I really rolled by eyes and how spooky they'd purposely made him look. The parts were Bill Skarsgård got to goof it up like a real clown were gold, though. More of that and less screaming and running at the camera. Great acting on his part.

Anyway, turns out the performance aspect is really key, which you can't really communicate with a static image. This illustration was really tough and went though lots and lots different versions. My sketchbook has pages of jolly clowns now, and I've got two more files on my computer where I got really far ahead in the drawing before scrapping it. Another difficulty was trying to keep 2017's It design out of my head. The first version really ended up looking a lot like Fleischer's Koko the Clown cartoon.

Long post short, went for a pierrot look because I really like that design outfit.

PS. Do Gray Jesters update their look with passing time? Do they go from jester with a magic sceptre to a circus clown with an evil rubber chicken? Standup comedians with a mic?

Monday, 16 October 2017

The lava ooze is generally to be found deep in areas with plentiful volcanic ability, as well as any of the warmer outer dimensions. While oozes generally feed on flesh, the lava ooze subsists on minerals, with any minerals with a melting point higher than its body being excreted. Because of this, the lava ooze is relatively non-aggressive. However, they are able to sense especially rich minerals, meaning that those wearing armour or precious stones may find themselves targets. But it's not that big a threat, since you can just amble away from the ooze. They are slow.

Me and Joe went to NYC recently and during our stay there I started doodling some oozes in my sketchbook. I've always found the ooze monster type really difficult to draw. Well, difficult to draw in an interesting way. There's only so many ways you can draw a blob. But I've recently been seeing a lot of really interesting sea slugs and I started using them as inspiration. I know most oozes are supposed to be kinda amorphous, blind, blobbity blobby blobs, but I kinda went for a half barnacle half snail thing here.

We fought a little pack of these guys in our current campaign. We mostly ran away from them. We've been running away from a lot of creatures.

Tuesday, 3 October 2017

Bearded devils, called barbazu in Infernal, are on the lower end of the mid-level hierarchy of Hell. As such, they get to be squad leaders. However, since their squads tend to be made up entirely of lemures, it's more like herding and goading irritable sheep. Their short tempers make them ill-suited for greater command. The barbazu itself is quite dangerous, however. Their primary weapon is a serrated glaive which causes persistent bleeding, requiring especially powerful healing magic or skilled surgery. If somehow deprived of their glaive, the barbazu has a not-so-secret weapon: it's eponymous beard.

The barbazu's beard is covered in disease-bearing toothy tendrils. Despite its wormy appearance, the tendrils are not prehensile. Still, the devil's use of them is suitably horrifying; it gets a good grip on a target with its claws and forces them face-first into its gruesome beard, forcing them to endure hundreds of little scrapes and bites. Should said target survive an encounter with the barbazu, they develop a fever which slowly saps them of their strength. The victim becomes too weak to even breathe and suffocates.

A creature we've encountered in our current campaign, as part of Vecna's troops. I've used on myself in a previous campaign, where a character was eviscerated by its claws (no chance for a beard attack). The glaive is a neat weapon, obviously, but nowhere near as colourful as the claw-beard combo. Even though the potential maximum damage of the glaive and claw-beard attacks are essentially the same, I guess the subsequent bleed damage of the glaive puts it over the top. Still, it's kind of a shame.

Notes on the design here. In the books I have (3.5 and 5th edition), the barbazu's beard is described as being snakey. In most illustrations I've seen, this has been interpreted as thick tendrils with pointy ends, like a barbed snake's tail. I decided to go more for the head end of the snake because it's so much more gruesome to have lots of little mouth nibble-nibble-nibbling at you. They turned out a little wormy though. Originally the design had a big mouth as well, but I took that away too. Now instead of having one big mouth, the barbazu has dozens of itty ones. They came out looking more like earthworms than snakes but shhh.

Maybe I should've forgone the single eye too and made it just a blank face, with the beard having his eyes. Lots of little eyes and teeth. Nibble nibble nibble.

Sunday, 16 July 2017

Illurien of the Myriad Glimpses is a mysterious creature living in a secret location in the Outlands known as the Atheneum Nefarious. Little is known about her or where she came from. Some theorize that she was created by the lich god Vecna, but this is unconfirmed. Those who have seen her describe Illurien as a silvery woman dressed in simple robes which seems to be made out of water. Her face is blank save for two penetrating blue eyes. She does not speak, but her voice patters like raindrops inside her head.

She is also one of the most knowledgeable creatures in the multiverse and her secret library is only second in size to Boccob's own. Each drop that makes up her body and floats around her represents a piece of knowledge that she's gathered over an indeterminate amount of years. The fine mist that surrounds her can daze nearby creatures by bombarding them with thousands of factoids at once. She can extend her body in a strike that sucks out the memories and thoughts of an opponent, leaving them a brain dead husk. Illurien's knowledge of combat techniques and psychology make her especially adept at dodging attacks simply by calculating the location of greatest advantage.

Ilurien of the Myriad Glimpses can be summoned to answer questions, but she must be treated with the same level of caution one would treat a demon. She cannot be trusted.

It was very very hard not to design Illurien in such a way to make her look like Blue Diamond from Steven Universe. Robed watery (blue) lady? Come on now. Eventually I came upon a design that made her look a little bit more alien and possibly ghostly, but I'm happy.

Sunday, 9 July 2017

The town has an old man with a story. When he was young, he was part of a group of miners going to explore a nearby cave. No bears or wolves entered there; no drow appeared on night-time raids; there wasn't the sound of dwarf, kobold or goblin pickaxes.

He describes going in with a dozen other young men, seeing the green and blue copper veins in the walls, the faint light of quartz reflecting lantern light. He describes a feeling that overcame him , the rushing ice-water and sinking guts of fear. All of them starting running, not to the mouth of the cave, but deeper, deeper into the darkness. He doesn't know how it happened, but they got separated. It must have been the panic that disoriented him, that made him forget where cavern openings were, what made him miss the pits that seemed to suddenly appear beneath his feet.

He remembers hearing voices in the dark, the voices of his friends shouting on the other side of walls, angry, afraid. He heard whispers in his ears that tell him it's their fault he was trapped here, that they're getting rid of him.

He doesn't know how he escaped. But don't go in the old cave, the cave with no animal prints, the cave that houses no bats. There's something evil in that cave and it can't be seen.

--

The earth whisper in an earth elemental that uses mind-altering effects to drive people into caverns, which it reshapes using the stone shape spell, trapping intruders in tiny pockets until they either starve, suffocate or kill themselves. If more than one person is there, after trapping them it gives them a sudden rush of gold lust which makes them fight each other over whatever meager riches the other holds. The earth whisper is incorporeal (though not invisible) and hides inside the stone walls of its cave while it drives others mad.

This kind of monster has really great potential for a more psychological campaign, I think.

It has a really great concept, but boy is it difficult to come up with a visual design for. It's an incorporeal earth elemental sooooo... a ghostly lump of dirt? Ghost are easy to draw since it's easy to identify a translucent human, skeleton, animal, whatever. But here you have to communicate that it's this weird type of creature and also by the way you can't touch it.

I'm fairly pleased with the result which I think does the whole intangible thing okay. I wanted to make an earth elemental that looked different from my earlier attempt. Though I kinda pat myself on the back for making it not a lump of grey-brown stuff and basing it on malachite, I find that it looks a bit more watery than earthy (the foam-like dust mane doesn't help either). With this one I took inspiration for pyrite and bismuth minerals. Not terribly spooky, but I like colours.

Sunday, 2 July 2017

The barghest is the particular flavour of hellhound that stalks the ashen slops of the Bleak Eternity of Gehenna. The barghest is especially ugly, looking like a bulky mangy wolf with goblinoid facial features. This beast is capable of shifting between a fully lupine and fully goblinoid form, but primarily stays in its hybrid body.

What makes the barghest a challenging opponent is its stealth capabilities. While it can't fly, it can surpass obstacles by levitating. It naturally leaves no marks of its passage and high-level spells are needed to detect nearby individuals. Larger barghests can also render themselves and members of their pack invisible. A barghest grows by consuming the corpses of humanoid victims, eating flesh and bone so nothing is left. The scant availability of puny mortals in their volcanic dimension means that any unfortunate interloper will find themselves greedily sought after.

The Barghest is one of the many names that the ghostly black dogs of British Isles. This particular name originating from Yorkshire. Other national variants include the yeth hound (Devon and Cornwall), Gwyllgi (Wales), Moddey Dhoo (Isle of Man), Grim (Lanchashire) and just so many spelling variations of Black Shuck. Black Shuck may be the most famous of these names, but I can't be sure. All of them are large ghostly dogs, black-furred with glowing red eyes, and death omens. The Hound of the Baskervilles was inspired by these legends. The name "barghest" is the one I was most familiar with because it was in a book of mythical creatures I had as a kid. I can't remember the title though. I had a lot of these books.

I'm not sure where the whole shapeshifting into a goblin thing exactly comes from; I've only found once instance of a legend that claims that black hounds can shapeshift. My closest guess is that somebody read the term goblin-dog ("goblin" meaning "monster" rather than your contemporary fantasy Tolkein goblin) and went with that.

Sunday, 25 June 2017

You generally don't want to tick off a god. And of all the gods, Lolth the Demon Queen of Spiders, goddess of the drow, is most obvious when displaying her displeasure. Any drow who fail to live up to the harsh standards of their cruel society are at the very real risk of being transformed into spidery monstrosities.

The form of the Shunned is reserved exclusively for female drow. They are transformed into bulging malformed heads covered in twitching, spider-filled tumours, scuttling on insectile legs. The Shunned are forced to disgorge swarms of spiders as the population builds up inside their throats. All creatures cursed by Lolth are pathetic, but the Shunned endure the most mental suffering.

Despite their new form, madness and subsequent exile from drow population centres, the Shunned continue to crave the forgiveness of their goddess. The lair of a Shunned is generally located as close to their former homes as possible, and is decorated with pieces of discarded furniture and clothing as they try to hold on to a semblance of their lost lives.

This is totally not the head monster from The Thing you guys. This one spits spiders. Totally different, yo.

Sunday, 18 June 2017

It's unclear whether the dwarves of the Material Plane and azers of the Elemental Plane of Fire are related. Both have a similar physical appearance and mode of thinking; both are short and stocky, bearded, diligent, regimented and master craftsmen. Was there a common ancestor? A dwarf that wandered into the fiery dimension, or an azer that cooled off here? Did the same gods create both? Or is it just happenstance?

The azers are one of the most prominent races on the Plane of Fire, a distinction they share with efreet and salamanders. However, of these three races, the azer are the weakest and their lives are a constant struggle to avoid becoming slaves to the efreet.

The concept of Elemental Planes is always a little bit difficult to wrap my head around. Like, shouldn't the Elemental Plane of Fire be exclusively fire? Should the Water one be just Water, Earth solid Earth? Isn't magma just liquid earth? Isn't smoke and ash hot air and dirt flecks? These dimensions always have a sky and ground and so on.

It's overthinking it, I know. It's magic and fantasy and stop dragging in real world logic into this, everybody knows Fire, Earth, Air and Water aren't real scientific elements anyway jeez. I guess these planes are just supposed to be most the -iness of the element than the element in its purest form. A mirror to our world, only the mirror's set on fire. Maybe there's a core of pure flames, but the rest of it's more of a Plane of Fieriness, fiery landscape, fiery creatures, fiery personalities, what Fire represents rather than just was Fire is.

Welp, worked that out for myself while writing. Good talk, guys, the next round of molten sulfur is on me.

Monday, 29 May 2017

Of the sentient races that occupy the ocean, the merfolk are the most numerous, or at least visible. Merfolk are as fascinated with humans as humans are with them, most likely due to a physical resemblance combined with the allure of foreign lower body. However, any closer relationship between them is stymied by environmental requirements, though there are many stories of individuals using magical means to overcome that hurdle. Normally a marine race, freshwater variants have been sighted living in especially large lakes.

But the mischievous and playful nature of the merfolk doesn't mean that they're entirely harmless. Humans who abuse their waters or aren't careful with their nets will find their boats more likely to sink, or suffer greater punishment as the merfolk appeal to their own watery gods.

Yay, I got this done just in time for the end of Mermay!

There's a lot of legends about mermaids, but not so many that I've found about mermen. You get plenty of romances between fishy ladies and human men, but not so much the other way around. The British Isles have a whole buncha merfolk stories that mention the male half of the race, but while the females are pretty, the males tend to be less attractive (a design trend that continues to exist to this day). Think of it as the difference between the Zoras and River Zoras in the Zelda games.

Sunday, 21 May 2017

Once upon a time, there was a not terribly attractive human ranger named Fitz-Auk, who was part of a small group of infiltrators for the Molthune army. Shenanigans ensued during a mission, which ended up with almost everyone in the group either dead or sent off to other planes of existence. Fitz-Auk, being in possession of terrible luck, ended up in Abbadon, arguably one of the worst places in existence. A magic book he stole from his mission's target protected him in the three months he spent there, but couldn't wholly prevent him from being corrupted by the plane's malevolent influence.

Our friend Jonathan Harris made a comic, Adventures in the Fangwood, which is really good. You should buy it. It's pretty much the last session we did with our characters and details exactly what happened to them. It's very funny and well done and details the exact reaction I got when I rolled three natural 1s in a row (a 1/8000 chance!).

Fitz-Auk is a character I really wanted to bring back. Joe's Fangwood campaign was the first part in the trilogy of adventures, and since the final installment was going to take place on the non-material planes, I figured that'd be the perfect time to bring him back.

As a ranger, he had Morse as a raven animal companion (actually an eagle that we fluffed as a really buff raven), which he lost when he gave him to another PC, who took it with him when he got teleported to Heaven (read the comic, explanations are given). Since he's spent to much time in Abbadon, I imagined he'd been mutated into a more monstrous race. I spent a little while trying to choose between tiefling for hellishness or a tengu because I wanted him to look kinda birdy. I went for tiefling in the end because it fit better and had more stuff I wanted. Now Fitz-Auk is down from his human 7 Charisma to a delightful 4 Charisma! Yay!

Sunday, 26 February 2017

There are many types of magic in the world. Amongst one of the purest forms of magic is truename magic. Everything in the world has a true name, a word that encapsulates the whole of their being. Ordinary arcane magic relies on a combination of spoken word, magic ingredient and/or mystic gesture. With truename magic, one only has to vocalize, using the true words which make up the fabric of the universe. However, the truename magic is very precise, relying heavily on intonation. Pronouncing a word wrong usually means the words fizzle, but certain higher powers of the multiverse have names which are able to twist back and damage those who use them incorrectly.

Word archons are the heavenly beings tasked with holding up the sanctity of truename magic. Flying on wings of paper, these archons strike down those who pervert true names to fulfil evil purposes. They are especially studious archons and will make sure to know the true name of their hated target so that their magic will land more effectively.

Name magic is something I always found quite fascinating. It's a fairly common fantasy trope, with magic generally being treated as using the original words of the universe. Knowing an entity's real name is definitely one that gets used and gets mentioned a lot in occult texts. I think Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea series is probably one of the better known examples. Voldemort from Harry Potter kinda has a similar thing going on, but that's less that his name is inherently magic and more that he's put charms on his own name.

Wednesday, 15 February 2017

There are planes in the universe (Faerie, the Feywild, the First World, Arborea, the Beastlands, whatever you want to call them), where nature is bigger, greater than it is in our lowly Material Plane. Some would even say that in those other planes are home to creatures as they were initially conceived by the gods. It isn't nature there; it's Nature. So while our world has moths, the other planes have Moths.

There we can find the Luna Moth, a horse-sized insect occasionally used by elves and fey creatures as mounts. They need to be trained in combat of course, but only about as much as an ordinary soldier would need to be trained. Luna Moths are intelligent creatures, making them partners as well as mounts. Sadly, they have no mouths with which to speak.

Luna Moths are ideal for scouting missions; they're capable of turning invisible at will and can see invisible other things which are hiding with invisibility spells. Though they can buffet targets with their wings, they're too thin to do much damage, making them poor combatants. The wings can scatter a soporific powder to create an avenue for escape.

Insects are really interesting animals. Did a bit of research into real luna moths. Your classic neutral luna moth is American, but other moon moth species exist in Asia and Africa. They all have big wings (yellow or green) with long tails coming off the lower wings. It's a bit of a sad insect as well, one of those whose adult stage only exists for mating. Luna moths don't have mouths and therefore can't feed, giving it only seven days to find partners before starving to death.

They might be called "luna" or "moon" moths because their eye-spots look a little like waxing moons? Most sources I'm looking at say that they're called that because they're nocturnal, but so are most moths.

Sunday, 5 February 2017

Psionics users (a.k.a. psychics) use a different type of power from traditional magic. Their powers are based on affecting their surroundings by exerting their mental powers to affect physical objects or other minds surrounding them. Generally, psionicists don't deal with the plethora of other planes that make up the universe. If they do, it'll be the Astral Plane, mind dimensions and dreams, and, on extremely rare instances, siphoning energy from the evil and good, and positive and negative planes.

Your tradional arcane and divine magic user is able to summon allies from other dimensions from other planes, pulling a physical creature out of their home plane onto the Material Plane. Psionicists can't do that.

But some psionicists achieve a close second. They can bring in ectoplasm from the astral plane and condense it to take on a solid, quasi-alive form for a few seconds or minutes. These are called astral constructs.

Some especially talented psionicists are able to make their astral constructs take on forms suited for specific tasks. The agile loper type of astral construct is made for speed and charges. The ectoplasm around the "head" is under great pressure, forming ultra-dense, very hard horns to knock down opponents so the construct can trample them underfoot.

Back to constructs!

This isn't a conscious choice, mind you. When I can't think of a creature I particularly feel like drawing, I use a system to randomly select one out of the monster manuals. I just happens that that same system sometimes gives me similar types several times in a row.

I really want to try out a game with psionics, but I've heard that they're notoriously unbalanced. Maybe if you run a game that only has psionics and no arcane / divine magic? I don't know.

Monday, 30 January 2017

Ghosts are created when the person's death happens when there's unfinished business in the world of the living and/or under especially traumatic circumstances. The allip is specifically the ghost of someone who was driven to madness and, eventually, suicide. As a result, the allip is both insane and vengeful, focusing its attention on those it blames for its traumatic death.

The allip can't communicate verbally, but babbles a constant stream of nonsense noise that attracts the attention of anybody that hears it. This ghost is completely incorporeal, but those who have been "touched" by the insubtantial shade report a cold shrivelling in their brains, similar to the feeling that mediums have reported when attempting psychic communication with it. If the allip has focused its attention on you, it's impossible to escape without divine aid.

Allips can be confused with banshees, a similar wailing, vengeful spirit. However, allips have no discernable gender and their voice is nowhere near as deadly.

Moving on from constructs (for now)! Allips are a monster that gets complained about on occasion because its abilities are what is called "save or die". Essentially, creatures have attacks or abilities which are normally countered by your own defenses. An orc with a club will have to bypass your armour in order to deal damage, a dragon's fire breath will have to bypass your Reflex (itself your natural dexterity plus any bonuses you have). But an allip's Madness ability has no save against it, and its incoporeal touch only has to phase though armour. While they deal no physical damage, the allip's attacks deal ability damage, your stats instead of your HP. As a low-level monster, you're probably not going to have access to the means needed for healing your stats. Meaning that in 4 hits an allip can essentially render your character unplayable by reducing it's Wisdom stat to 0, driving it insane.

Friday, 13 January 2017

The forbidden palace-city of the Dread King Irek is an alluring quarry for treasure-hunters. Abruptly and mysteriously abandoned by both its master and its thousands of apparent denizens for hundreds of years, its halls remain a trove of wealth, technology and magical artifacts that few thieves could resist. As many have discovered, however, the city is not unattended.It is assumed that the six building-sized iron golems, known affectionately as the Daughters of Irek, act as caretakers of the Dread King's earthly remnants in his absence. Nobody can be sure, of course, for they do not speak. The slow, relentless beat of their unimaginably heavy paces can be heard for miles around as they patrol the great streets, tricking some into thinking that they are docile, or even mindless. Despite appearing to lack any great sensory faculties, however, the moment any intruder crosses the threshold of the great city, the Daughters wordlessly break from their patrol and converge on the offending creature. Seeming to simply "sense" its presence, they continue to pursue it until they have the opportunity to destroy it, which they do invariably and without hesitation. Only once the intruder has been slain do they ponderously return once more to their mysterious pattern.

Happy 2017! Insert my usual platitudes about not posting enough here, etc etc. Here's an Iron Colossus! Predictably, all the Colossi listed in the Epic Level Handbook are of the colossal size category which is essentially the largest meaningful size category that is statted within the D&D system (everything larger is simply lumped under "colossal plus"), so they are some truly big boys. I probably should have put some stuff in there to show scale (a la my oversized Cadaver Collector from a couple of years ago) but honestly I just kind of went in guns blazing on this one and didn't think about it too much. I guess the stomps kind of suggest a very large size? I don't know. It's always a struggle for me to work out the amount of detail/effort/attention to put into large drawings (which I know sounds weirdly lazy - of course I should put effort into everything I do), but I find it very easy to overthink things, so sometimes I have to try and work against that and just do something that's a bit more relaxed. I'm mostly saying this to justify to myself why this drawing looks a bit crude compared to the Cadaver Collector despite that drawing being two years old. But it's ok.

One of the reasons I was trying to stay quite relaxed about this drawing was because I made a time-lapse video of me making it! This is something I've wanted to do for quite a while (people often ask me about my process and I'm wayy too shy an artist to livestream myself drawing or whatever so this seemed like the next best thing). I usually do a few more design ideas at the beginning and there are usually a lot of false starts - sometimes i'll literally get halfway through cleaning up an illustration and then abruptly decide I hate it and start again - with this one I tried to just start drawing and keep going until I got done. I'll definitely try and do this again in future - if only because I really enjoyed picking the music (which, if you're interested, is from Undertale).

Sunday, 8 January 2017

The ice golem! Terrifying frozen construct of the cold wastes, servant of sorcerers of frost! These towering guardians wander the snowy surroundings of their masters' domains and can swiftly glide across or climb any icy surface. The power to animate this creature is held in the runes that have been carved into its body. For offensive capabilities, the golem is capable of shooting great shards of ice from its body, tearing surrounding intruders to shreds. Yowza!

Of course the ice golem can also be created by the wishes of children. Not quite as powerful or big as something made by a wizard or druid, and prone to free will, but still pretty impressive.

A somewhat belated Christmas / New Year's image for the blog. But it's still winter and the twelve days of Christmas are barely over so... eh?

About This Blog

Dungeons & Drawings was started in the summer of 2010 by Blanca Martinez and Joe Sparrow as an illustrative project to re-imagine the many fantastical creatures that feature in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game series.

For us, one of the most fun elements of D&D growing up was simply perusing the various "Monster Manuals", which catalogue hundreds of varied beasts for use in your campaigns. These books are illustrated by a variety of amazingly talented fantasy artists who continue the proud tradition of painters like Frank Frazzetta.

What this blog seeks to do is to take the ideas behind these monsters and redesign them with a more simplified, illustrative goal in mind - trying to be adventurous as possible with colour, style and composition whilst pushing the concept of the creature as far as it will go.

Both Blanca and Joe are professional artists who work as animators in London. They aim to upload an illustration each every Sunday and have run numerous "guest weeks" involving contributions from such famous and talented folk as Matt Layzell and Katie Tiedrich.

Feel free to drop us a line at either of our emails with any questions or comments: